I'm a dual Colombian-Luxembourgish freelance journalist, inveterate traveler and writer based in the world's only Grand Duchy. I write a column on European affairs for the opinion page of El Tiempo, Colombia's main newspaper. I have been a columnist for Newsweek International, and have written for, among others, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and the Toronto Globe & Mail.

From Bill Gates's Toilets to Louvre Art: A Poop Potpourri

The exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris of Wilm Delvoye, the controversial Belgian conceptual “provocateur” artist, has been considered revolutionary. The iconoclast Delvoye is already renowned mainly for the Cloaca, a complex machine he calls his “magnus opus” that, through a series of tubes, funnels and jars actually consumes food and processes it into excrement, simulating the human digestive process.

Delvoye's Supp at the Louvre Photo: Wim Delvoye

Since the original Cloaca created in 2000, Delvoye has developed a series of related pieces, including Cloaca New and Improved, Cloaca Turbo, Cloaca Quatro, Personal Cloaca, Super Cloaca and many others. The current “piece de resistance” at the Louvre is another eschatologically-themed work: a 40-foot, Gothic, twisting phallic object made of steel called “Suppo” – short for suppository – positioned under the museum’s main glass pyramid.

The exhibition extends into other rooms of the Louvre, including the Napoleon III apartments and the Tuileries Gardens, that showcase other provocative works like fiberglass pigs wrapped in rugs and a sculpture of a buck and a doe engaged in an unnatural sexual act.

But I digress from the point of this poop-inspired post. What brought Delvoye to mind was another excrement-themed revolution with much bigger and, if I may say so, greater implications of social benefit thanks to the philanthropic efforts of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Gates at Toilet Fair Photo: Gates Foundation

Last week, the Gates Foundation selected the winners of a project launched a year ago to find new ways to improve conditions for the 2.6+ billion people on the planet who lack access to safe sanitation. The challenge: Design a self-contained toilet that doesn’t require sewer connection or piped-in water plumbing, would cost less than 5 cents a day per person to operate, is easy to maintain and would turn excrement into valuable products like fuel and fertilizer.

Research grants totaling $3 million were awarded to eight universities in China, Switzerland, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. The results were unveiled at the “Reinvent the Toilet Fair” in Seattle, where 50 gallons of fake feces made from soybeans and rice were used to test the inventions. First prize went to the California Institute of Technology’s solar-powered toilet that breaks down feces and urine into hydrogen gas that can power backup generators at night. Other winners were equally impressive, offering toilets that microwave or turn feces into charcoal, or incorporate fly larvae to process waste into animal feed.

The foundation has announced a second round of the Toilet Challenge, with another $3.4 million in grants to universities in the UK, India, and the United States. Next up, the Gates Foundation will flush $370 million into developing the toilets that won the first round.

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